By The Window
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: She saw the fight on the TV, and she's standing by the window waiting for a red and blue streak to fly by, like she always does and always will. This is their life together, they are so happy. This isn't Spider-man and MJ, it's Peter and Mary Jane.


He came in through the window about an hour ago. He wasn't as beaten up as she had thought from watching the television. She had stood by her window, turning out all the lights in their apartment so he could swiftly land on their windowsill and no one would see him. She stood there, with a blanket, in the dark, watching the lights of the city dance around, and listening to the hustle and bustle of everyone down there. Her eyes adjusted easily, and she waited to see a streak of red and blue fly towards her from the distance.

The news lady on the television was recounting the scene's events for new viewers. She was saying Spider-man just left about fifteen minutes ago, having saved a group of hostages from the Green Goblin. They were showing imprints in the sides of buildings where Spider-man had been thrown. They were showing the ground where he had fallen, and how the Goblin had thrown the bombs. They showed a piece of his costume, having been ripped off in the fight. They were interviewing survivors, reporting that no one was seriously injured.

"He grabbed me!" A teenaged girl was saying. "I was falling and then I felt him grab me! He said 'don't worry, I got you,' can you believe it! He had me!"

The teenaged girl was smiling, but screaming frantically. She was scared, but overjoyed. She was shaking and crying, but she was laughing.

And Mary Jane Watson Parker stood by the window, watching as a red and blue streak flew around the corner of a towering hotel, coming into her view. She backed away slightly, watching him swing and let go of his web, falling over to their apartment. He hit the wall with a big thud, and disappeared into the dark. He opened up the window, and crawled in without making a sound. Silent, smooth, like his namesake. He crawled upward, onto the ceiling; he bent backwards and closed the window, then flipped down to the floor. He hadn't seen her standing there. So when he stood she ran up to him, and wrapped him in that blanket and put her arms around him. He made a small moan, a cry of surprise. But before he could have done anything, before his Spider-sense could have warned him, she had taken off his mask and kissed him.

They sat in the bathroom together. She leaned on the sick and he was sitting on the rib of the bathtub. He had his shirt off, and his Spider-boots beside him. She looked at him, the bruises he had received the previous night hadn't even healed up yet, and he had a whole array of new ones. But she didn't feel sad about it, because as he was cleaning up his cuts with peroxide and all that, he was smiling. The medicine burned his cuts but he laughed at it, laughed at himself.

"I was on the TV?" He asked.

"Yeah." She laughed.

"How was my hair?"

He started rubbing his wrists. She saw how swollen they looked. It happens every time he fights, he uses so much web, his wrists begin to swell. But he insists it never hurts all that much.

"You looked fat." She said.

"Heeey." He said. "Maybe it was their news cameras, adds five pounds or whatever."

"No, you just looked fat."

He made a grin and turned around.

"Could you get my back?" He asked her, handing her the peroxide.

"I don't get why you still need this with your super-spider-healing powers." She said as she bent down and started rubbing his back.

"Old habits."

"Hm?"

"Aunt May. Whenever I got scraped up, she'd take me into the bathroom and put this stuff on my cuts."

She rubbed his back gently, making it so that the cuts didn't burn, in a way only she could.

"I don't get how you can even heal faster anyway. Spiders don't have healing powers." She said.

"I don't think about these things." He laughed. "Don't question a good thing, MJ. It's hard enough I got powers in the first place instead of dying from radiation poison or something."

She laughed.

"Do you even have radioactive blood?" She asked.

"I don't know…" He perked up his head.

"Well, if Mr. Fantastic can become a human rubber band from gamma rays, I guess I can accept you."

"Gamma rays are the Hulk."

"What?"

"Cosmic rays made the Fantastic Four."

"Oh whatever, they're both rays."

"Not whatever!" He laughed. "They're two extremely different types of rays!"

"You're such a nerd."

"I'm just trying to educate you, woman." He said.

He was wiggling, turning his back so he could see her out of the corner of his eye. She her in all her wonder. Even with her head in a bun and in her pajamas, her Spider-man pajamas that she had bought from Wal-Mart, because they didn't have enough money to shop at Target, she was amazingly gorgeous. She smiled with those green eyes, so full of life.

"Stop moving." She said.

"MJ…"

She started to massage his shoulders, making him rear his head up and close his eyes in sweet intimacy. She bent down and started to kiss his wounds, making her way up to his neck and cheek, until their lips met.

"You're so beautiful."

She was in the kitchen a little later. He was still in his costume pants, his chin rested on his hand as he watched her.

"I went shopping today." She said going to the freezer. "Got you some ice cream."

"Oh my God."

"What?"

"You're the best wife, ever."

"Tiger, I know that."

She started scooping out some wonderful chocolate ice cream, and he just stood there, watching her. She put a bowl in front of him with two spoons, and put her chin on her hand on the other side of the counter, and they just looked at each other.

"What do you think Harry wanted tonight?"

"I don't know." He said. "I should go talk to him tomorrow."

"I'll come."

He frowned at her.

"If he wanted to hurt you tonight, he would have." She said. "You're not at all that messed up. I could come too, he wouldn't hurt me."

"Don't you have a rehearsal?"

"That's Sunday."

He sighed, twirling his spoon in his ice cream.

"Do you ever get tired of getting kidnapped?" He asked.

"I don't see it as being kidnapped. I see it as going to work with you." She smiled.

He nearly laughed his ice cream out.

"It seriously doesn't faze me anymore." She smiled.

She tapped her spoon on the surface of the melting ice cream, leaning down towards her husband.

"Because…I know you're gonna come and get me." She said.

"Always." He nodded. "I'd punch Tony Stark in the face for you."

She laughed, taking a gulp of ice cream.

"Well, I'd slap Wolverine for you." She said.

"I'd call Doctor Strange a dirty pagan for you!" He pointed at her.

"I'd call Magneto a nasty old pervert!"

An hour ago he came through the window, beaten and bruised, and she wrapped a blanket around him and kissed him. An hour ago he was swinging home to his wife, to that familiar place beside her. An hour ago, as he swung through the cold night, he saw her face, and felt her warmth.

Now they're lying on the couch together, sharing a bowl of popcorn. He's lying on her lap still in his costume pants. They're watching Evil Dead 2, and he's mouthing the one-liners and laughing at the excessive gore. It was his turn to pick the movie. After all their years together though, their movie tastes were combining together. Last week she had chosen the Fly, and the week before that he had chosen the Fountain.

"Can Mr. Fantastic stretch every part of his body?" She asked with a distant voice, somewhat wrapped up in Bruce Campbell chopping off his own possessed hand.

"I assume so." He said.

"Hm."

"Yeah. Crazy."

"I heard they were trying to get a Fantastic Four movie." She said.

"Yeah, Johnny mentioned it."

"They're not gonna do it are they?"

"Johnny's all for it."

She started stroking his hair, reaching for popcorn with her other hand.

"Spider-man, the movie." She smirked.

"Only if they get Hugh Jackman to be me." He said.

She laughed.

"Hugh Jackman doesn't look a thing like you."

"No one knows that!"

She was laughing too hard to reply to him. Popcorn was getting stuck in her throat but she couldn't help but laugh. She arched her back and he had to get up from her lap. He looked at her a little offended.

"What's so funny?" He asked.

She just kept laughing.

"What's so funny!?"

She shook her head and waves her had at him, trying to get him to stop.

She was crawling for bed, and he was checking his stats on World of War Craft. She stood in the hallway looking at him in the small computer room that used to be a closet, the white light of the monitor flashing over his eyes.

"My poor Night Elf." He lamented to the computer screen. "I never have enough time for you. If I could, I would empower you to become greater than the greatest armies of the Horde. Single-handedly we would tear their members down. Alas, I have other responsibilities."

She chuckled to herself.

"Don't laugh at me!" He yelled in a playful manner. "You wouldn't understand! You just wouldn't!"

"I support you and your gaming, oh mighty Elf." She bowed and laughed.

"If you really did you'd get me a Hot Pocket right now." He pointed at her.

"I'd get you a Hot Pocket if only we had some, my knight, my hero."

"You are useless then!"

He slammed the closet door, shutting her out, laughing as he did so. She walked over and opened the door, and he opened up his arms, grabbing her and making her sit on his lap. She kissed him as he laid his head in her chest. He wrapped one arm around her waist, and another hand started clicking away at the mouse.

"That's you?" She asked, scratching at his head.

"Mmmhmm." He nodded slightly. "I'm an Elf Hunter, see, I got a pet too?"

"Is that a pet spider?"

"…Yes."

"You're so corny."

"You don't think it gives me away do you?"

She laughed as he clicked away.

"I was fighting one of the Young X-men the other day." He said. "Just some kid at the school who was staying up past curfew. He started talking trash to me, and I said to him, 'Kid, I'm gonna beat you.' He asks why, and before I give him the killing blow I yell 'Cause I'm fracking Spider-man!' and BAM!" He was laughing.

"That's my man." She nodded. "Beating on little school kids, cursing them out with Battlestar Galatica words."

"You bet!"

He signed off and the monitor went dim. They sat in the dark for a moment longer as he wrapped his other arm around her and grabbed her. She took his head in her chest and kissed his forehead.

"I'll get us some money soon, MJ." He said. "I'll go swinging and take some pictures before we go see Harry."

"Don't worry about it, Tiger." She held him. "I got everything I could ever want right now."

"No, I'll get us money, we'll get a better place."

"Shush, don't worry yourself over these things. I'm getting a paycheck tomorrow anyway, we're good for another few weeks."

He was silent and very still.

"I want to give you more." He told her.

"You take me web-slinging whenever I ask, I think that counts for something."

"Wanna go to Coney Island soon?"

"Yeah, that sounds nice."

"I could take some pictures of you."

She led him to bed, because he never knew when he was tired. Like a little kid with a spider blood, he never could tell when he was hitting a wall. She led him to bed as the world went on. There were sirens and he rose, half asleep, and she pulled him down.

"Let someone else get it." She said. "It's just a car chase. Let Daredevil get it, let Black Cat get it, let someone else get it."

"Great power…" he started to mumble.

"I know, Tiger, I know." She pulled at him still. "It's okay. You're the most responsible person I know."

He fell back down to her in the bed. Three hours ago he was fighting the Green Goblin, and he hit the concrete of the ground below, and he thought of her. Three hours ago he was falling from his web, which at his core feels wrong. Spiders don't fall from their webs, they just don't. And he was hit in the side, and thrown into the side of building, and he thought he could smell her in the air.

"And I know." She said. "I know you gotta go out there for them all." She told him. "But I'm responsible for you, and right now you need to lay here with me."

Three hours ago she was watching him fall on the television. She was watching him fight the Green Goblin, and save the world just a bit at the time. And she went to the cabinet to grab a blanket to cover him in when he'd get home, and went to the window where he'd come home. And she'd always be there for him. Waiting by the window for him to come home, or down in the streets watching from below, or in the clutches of a villain. That was the life they'd chosen, that is what she has chosen.

They barely had enough money to get by. He came home with cuts and bruises. The TV broke, and the plumbing was bad. The sirens went off all the time and people screamed in the building. But they were fine, and they were happy. They were doing what they wanted. She was acting, he was saving the world and taking pictures of it, and they were doing it together. The world rushed by, but they were together just then, sleeping the pains away, beside each other, happier than anyone could have been.

Tomorrow more fights would break out between him and the Goblin. Along with some armed robberies, and a visit from some of the X-men that would cause anti-mutant breakouts. The next day the Vulture might escape. Or Doctor Octopus. Or Venom. Or Kraven. Or Connors may slip and become the Lizard again. But at the end of the day, he'd come home and she'd be there. She never worried either. She never for second doubted him. She never feared him dying; it wasn't even an issue with her. She wasn't afraid anymore. She knew she couldn't be anymore.

So they lay there, and will lay there night after night together. He'll wake up the next morning to her making pancakes. A week from now they'll make it to Coney Island and spend the day together and recount their younger days. She'll say how stupid she was back then, and he'll tell her she was never ever stupid. She'll say how she wished he had told her about Spider-man sooner. He'll say he was just protecting her. And she'll say they protect each other now.

He smelled her hair and felt her skin. Her lips scraped against his shoulder. Their legs intertwined with each other and the covers. An easiness came upon him, a calmness, feeling perhaps, everything was right in the world.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

---------------

I always saw Peter and Mary Jane's love as an eternal thing, the most perfect of relationships, where they were just so in tune with each other nothing could break them apart. That she loved him for who he was. And that wasn't necessarily Spider-man, but Peter Parker. This nerd who plays World of War Craft. And he loves her, and feels so guilty he can't provide more for her. But she doesn't even care about it.

I thought they were the one relationship that would never end in Marvel. Wolverine goes through women like candy (mostly they die though), Scott and Jean broke up and now Scott's with that whore Emma Frost, Iron Man is a playboy, Rogue and Gambit are on hold at the moment, and everyone just dates and breaks up and dates and breaks up.

But not Peter and MJ. I saw them living normal lives too. I saw them after the day of saving people, just loving that they're together at all, talking about normal things, and gossipping about the other Super heroes.

Here's hoping they get back together.


End file.
